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Linux Desktops Send NASA Rovers to Mars
joestar writes "It's not a secret that Linux has been used at NASA for a long time, and it appears that they have been using it quite extensively on the desktop. From the article: 'At the JPL, it is common to see Red Hat Inc., SuSE or Mandriva Linux running on users' desktops alongside Windows. [...] that's still a lot of Linux on the desktop.' More surprisingly, they seem to be reluctant to use Linux on servers: 'Our personal view is that Linux, period, is only for the desktop. We don't run our main servers on Linux, because there are too many flaws in main Linux kernel.'"
I haven't used Solaris recently, but aren't they bundling:
You will find none of this in the heavily-audited OpenBSD base. You also get added protection from W^X, randomized order in loading shared libraries, a malloc that uses mmap and discontiguous memory, gcc propolice, plus other defenses that make weaknesses in C code harder to exploit. There is at least one other C defense mechanism that is available if you run SPARC rather than i386. True, some of the previous list does exact a slight performance penalty.
(I assume that) an equivalent of W^X is available under Solaris (if you are on the right CPU), but most of the other stuff wouldn't be.
This is what Microsoft has never really understood, and because it's never put that much effort into getting *nix software to easily port over (they did have good intentions with NT 3.5), there are a huge range of applications, particularly at the high end, which will likely never be found on a Windows machine.
Yes, let's all cry for poor, struggling Microsoft, who are trying desperately to build a marketshare large enough to be noticed by the bigger players...
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the vast amount of NASA's management and engineering software is written in C
Most of Windows is also written in C.
At any rate, one of the few things that Windows has going for it is the vast amount of apps that are readily available for it. If there's a *nix app that can securely rip data from audio CD's (like Exact Audio Copy does on Windows), please let me know about it so I can rid myself forever of Windows (at least at home). (Save your breath, Wine doesn't count.)
Yes, Windows sucks, but let's give credit where credit is due.
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